The present invention relates to an endoscope assembly comprising a pickup element, a wireless transmitter for transmitting pictorial information picked up by means of said pickup elements in a body cavity or other cavity by means of electric wave and a display unit which receives the transmitted electric waves and visualizes the pictorial information.
An endoscope has been generally used for observing a cavity in a living body or a cavity of mechanical parts. By such an endoscope, an image of an object to be observed has been transmitted from the cavity of a living body or other body by means of optical fibre bundles and the optical image focussed on the output end of optical fibre bundle has been observed by means of an optical lens system. On the other hand, there has been developed a device wherein a pickup element such as a charge-coupled elements (referrred hereinafter as CCD) is installed at the tip of the shaft of endoscope in lieu of said optical fibre, the optical image formed on the receptor surface of this pickup element is converted into an electric signal, which is transmitted from the cavity of living body or mechanical body, processed at the outside of the cavity and displayed on a screen of a television. In such an endoscope, a light source unit is usually installed at the outside of cavity so that the light from the unit is guided through the connector means (light guide) of endoscope to the probe thereof to irradiate the object to be observed.
In the above-mentioned conventional endoscope assemblies, the former system for the optical observation is provided with the light guide for guiding illumination light for illuminating the object to be observed and the observation is carried out directly by the naked eye though an optical lens system so that the handling as well as the observation are not done easily. In the case of the observation of image employing the latter pickup element, the image of an object can be observed on a large-sized screen of a television but the assembly requires a light guide for illuminating the object to be observed in a similar manner to the former optical system, and a signal circuit for connecting the signal to the television, thus the system has a disadvantage that it is not handled easily.